In U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/274,502, entitled System and Method for Preprocessing and Delivering Multimedia Presentations, filed on Jul. 13, 1994 concurrently with, and for the same inventors of the present application, and incorporated herein by reference, the limitations associated with prior schemes for delivering multimedia presentations are discussed. An object of this related U.S. patent application is a system and method for preprocessing and delivering multimedia presentations. An object of the present application is a novel apparatus and method for preprocessing a multimedia presentation, which can be employed in a preprocessing and delivery system such as described in the related U.S. patent application.